I am a Libertarian. The capitalization matters, not because it makes the word sound extreme or passionate, but because that capital "L" signifies my membership in the Libertarian Party. The LP, as we fondly call it, is the United States' third party par excellence. I am what you would call a card-carrying Libertarian—just check my wallet. The LP is more than a political party. Ironically, for a movement that champions individualism, it's a community and a culture.
I used to write a blog on Quora called "Libertariana." I stopped writing there in 2016, after Gary Johnson's record-setting third-party run ended, disappointingly, with the election of the very un-libertarian Donald Trump. It wasn't that I expected Gary Johnson to win. I simply didn't know how to talk about politics in a world where such a man was the President of the United States. On one hand, I didn't want to give the impression that I supported the new administration, but I also didn't want to turn my blog into just a bitter, knee-jerk criticism of it. In my mind, libertarian political theory was always meant to be slightly out of step with current politics, focusing on evergreen principles rather than chasing the personalities and talking heads of the day. I didn't know what to say at that point, and my blog fell by the wayside as a result.
This periodical is meant to be a continuation of that blog, using the same name—a name that I admit I fell in love with.
The Libertarian Party's Past and Present
In hindsight, the election of 2016 represented a recent high point for the party. We seemed to be only an election cycle or two away from breaking the mythical 5% threshold to receive federal funding.
However, even as we were making strides in the public eye, a new threat was growing within our ranks. Like a trojan horse, a group of infiltrators called the Mises Caucus appeared in 2017. Over the next few years, they consolidated power, until in a dramatic 2022 coup that they dubbed the "Reno Reset," they seized control of the party's leadership (more on that in later articles).
How the Mises Caucus was Able to Take Over
The Mises Caucus did not take over the LP on their own merits. Rather, they were the beneficiaries of a perfect storm of factors which seemed to almost conspire (“like an invisible hand”) to give them disproportionate power.
The most important of these, I believe, was the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic shifted the balance of power within the party from the old to the young and from in-person meetings to shallow discourse of the type we know from X (formerly Twitter).
The next most important was the influx of money from rich Republican-leaning donors who were no longer willing to support their party after Trump's rise. In some cases, these donors had had little or no direct experience with the LP; in other cases these donors were people who had previously flirted with the LP but had abandoned it when it became clear that it wasn't socially and politically right-wing enough for them. Their goal, like many Republicans in the beginning, was probably to oppose Trump's takeover. Over the course of the Trump administration, as the traditional Republican donor class became gradually more pro-Trump, so did these donors. In other words, the money came with strings attached—they were voting with their dollars to remake the LP in their image, more socially right-wing and eventually more pro-Trump. The Mises PAC, a loose branch of the Mises Caucus, was clever enough, lucky enough, and unprincipled enough to seek out this money in particular. The total amount wasn't huge, but it was enough to procure buses, signs, and swag, and in general created a highly attractive halo of affluence and enthusiasm among the Mises Caucus.
The third most important factor was the wave of publicity generated by Gary Johnson and Bill Weld's record-setting 2016 campaign. At 3%, it was the greatest general election result the LP had ever achieved. To put it in perspective, that figure means that approximately one out of every 33 people who voted for president voted for the LP's ticket that year—that's more than 2 million people. Ironically, some of the new libertarians (lower case l) that campaign brought in incorrectly saw 3% as a floor rather than a ceiling, taking it entirely for granted and underestimating how hard it had been to reach that figure in the first place.
Whatever the specific reasons were, the effect was that talented, long-serving Libertarians with strong social relationships; a history of vigorous, thoughtful, civil in-person debates; and vast institutional knowledge accumulated over decades of thankless volunteer activism were driven out and replaced with young, entitled keyboard warriors motivated primarily by bitterness and disdain towards party elders.
The new LP administration has been a disaster by almost any metric. Membership is down, donations are down, the national executive staff has been beset by resignations, several states have disaffiliated, and social media messaging has been inconsistent, bizarre, and off-putting.
To be sure, there are recent signs that the LP is coming out of its dark tunnel: two non-MC members have recently been elected to the Libertarian National Committee, and prominent figures associated with the caucus, like Michael Rectenwald, Tom Woods, and Dave Smith, are taking steps back.
Why I'm Writing This Now
The reason I'm writing this article now is that I believe the time is right for a positive vision of Libertarianism. Those of us who believe in the core principles of libertarianism (even after all this drama!) can reclaim our party and steer it back towards a more mature, rational, professional, principled, and inclusive direction. We should not be ashamed to admit we're card-carrying Libertarians.
The Libertarian Party must reaffirm its commitment to the core principles of a tolerant, open, and free society. We must focus positively on what we stand for rather than on what we oppose, and we must do this thoughtfully and with integrity, without falling into the trap of acting as an auxiliary to either of the two major parties.
This periodical will describe and explain my vision for Libertarianism, the Libertarian Party, and some associated philosophical and political problems in a way that I hope is interesting and appealing to libertarians and non-libertarians alike.
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